Till Next We Meet Read online

  So, she had slept most of the day after all. She would spend the night in restless nightmares.

  “You look pale, madam. Are you feeling well?”

  Did it matter? She slept and dreamed and slept and dreamed and sometimes she awoke, sat up against the headboard feeling adrift in a mindless confusion. At times like those she took another draught of the laudanum and waited to sleep again.

  “You should eat something, madam,” the maid said, finally done with the chore of arranging dishes and cutlery.

  Catherine didn’t turn from her survey of the strange fog-laden countryside. “I’m not hungry,” she said. How many times would she have to repeat those words until her staff learned from them?

  “Cook said you didn’t eat dinner last night or breakfast this morning. You should eat a bite or two. Just that, madam. Please.”

  The girl’s name was Betty, and she was adept at her tasks. She was walking out with a footman, and had a sparkling laugh and a habit of covering her mouth with her hand to hide her bad teeth. She was deferential and pleasant enough in the before time. The before time—that achingly innocent period when life had been halcyon and beautiful, ripe with promise and heavy with anticipation. The before time, before the letter had come, before Harry’s body had been returned in a pitch-soaked coffin, before the world became shadowed and black, wearing mourning as deep as night.

  She’d confessed in one of her letters to him that she was afraid of the dark.

  The shadows of darkness, he’d written in reply, give an ominous appearance even to friendly things. Think, instead, of evening as a time of welcome rest, and darkness as the Almighty’s way of forcing peace upon his creatures. The owl and the field mouse will be night’s sentinels.

  She had held that letter to her chest, cherishing the near poetry of his words. That night she’d tested herself by standing in the hallway outside her chamber with no candle or lantern to light her way.

  I cannot promise you, my dearest, she’d responded, that I met the darkness with any degree of comfort, but my loathing of it has eased somewhat.

  The night held no terrors for her now. Instead, daylight tested her courage. Being awake was a measure of her bravery.

  “I’m not hungry,” she repeated, hoping that the girl would have sense enough to hear the resolve in her tone. Food sickened her. Sleep did as well, bringing nightmares that were torturously confusing and colored red and purple and blue, but even those visions were preferable to being awake.

  “Glynneth made me promise,” Betty said.

  Catherine forced a smile to her face. “Tell her that you succeeded.” Her companion would not hesitate in hiding behind another in order to accomplish her aims. In the before time, she would have saluted Glynneth’s courage. Now the other woman’s tenacity was an annoyance.

  She managed to hold the smile in place as she walked to the door and stood beside it. Betty sighed, sketched a very pretty little curtsy, and clasped her hands in front of her starched apron.

  “If you’re sure, madam.”

  “Do not worry about me,” Catherine said. “Leave the tray here, and I’ll eat something in a little while.”

  Reassured, the maid left, and she was blessedly alone again. Catherine closed the door, leaning her forehead against it. Her staff wanted so much for things to be as they were, never realizing that the before time could never come again. Not until God made it May again.

  She’d been so eager for the post, so innocently happy when Glynneth brought her mail. She’d been disappointed not to receive some word from Harry, but she’d never felt a sense of premonition at opening the letter from his colonel.

  Madam Dunnan,

  It is with deep regret that I inform you that your husband, Harold Allen Dunnan of the Lowland Scots Fusiliers was killed in a skirmish with French soldiers on April 18, in the year of our Lord 1761.

  Your husband died with valor, madam. His entire service with the regiment was one of honor and dedication. His death will leave a void.

  I was privileged to know your husband well, and counted him as friend. My sympathies are with you, madam, and with Harold’s family. In times such as these, mere words seem futile.

  While she was eagerly awaiting his letters, Harry was already dead.

  For the sake of her staff, Catherine sat and poured herself some tea, nibbled at a roll. Two bites of the fish muddle and she could eat no more.

  She turned and looked at the trunk, set as it was at the end of her bed. How alien the worn leather looked amid the femininity of her chamber. She should have, by rights, sent it to Harry’s room. That’s how their life was before he joined the regiment. Harry in one chamber and she in another.

  Harry had been content with the arrangements, just as he had been content to live in her father’s home. She had never anticipated that he might have chafed under the restrictions of marriage to her, enough to join a Highland regiment. But he had been so filled with enthusiasm that she’d done what other women had done since time—and war—began. She kissed him and stood and waved at him until he was out of sight. Only then did she cry.

  Catherine went to the trunk and lifted the lid, taking a letter from it. His letters to her were precious things and she kept them here, along with all those personal possessions that had been returned to her.

  Carefully, she unfolded the letter and began to read.

  You asked me to speak more of my companions. Shall I tell you of Peter, the colonel’s aide? He is barely a man, and so earnest that he makes me feel old in comparison. He’s impatient to experience all that life would grant him. Given that he amazes me with his wisdom sometimes, he might be one of those people who seem to have been born old and wise.

  We have sent most of the French back to France, a decision made by Major General Wolfe. Quebec is a pretty place, but it’s evident that we are not welcome here. I would just as soon leave the city and return home.

  Home. If he’d only returned home, her life would have been so different.

  She moved to the bed, grateful for the fatigue that suddenly overwhelmed her, slowing her heart until it felt like a pendulum, ponderously marking the minutes.

  The blanket was comforting, the white darkness behind her eyes a welcome sight. She curled beneath the sheets, still holding his letter.

  Catherine composed a letter to him in her mind, a habit she’d begun six months ago. They were transitory missives, never committed to paper, and not for the knowledge of another soul. It eased her mind to think that somewhere Harry could read them.

  I’m so lonely, my dearest. The days pass and you aren’t here. The nights come and you are gone. There isn’t a hint of your voice or your scent or your touch. Is there majesty in Heaven? Can you see the stars?

  Her tears were hot, scorching her cheeks. She shuddered as she wept, then held both hands against her mouth to silence her cries.

  Months had passed, and it felt like only a day.

  Dear God, please end this.

  But God never did.

  “Are you certain that you don’t wish me to go with you, Colonel? I mean, Your Grace?”

  Peter looked abashed at his mistake, just as he had every time he’d made it during the journey from America. It was an easy error—going from the rank of colonel to Duke of Lymond was a change that Moncrief himself had not adjusted to yet.

  He clapped his former aide on the shoulder, a wordless acceptance of his unspoken apology.

  The innkeeper looked on curiously, as did the tavern maid, who was refilling Peter’s cup. Perhaps he and his aide warranted a closer second look, since both of them were attired in their uniforms.

  Kirkulben was a pleasant village, larger than he expected, with two main roads that crossed each other to make an X. Huddled between them were a myriad of cottages, all of them charming and carefully kept. The two main streets boasted a variety of shops, and two inns. He and Peter had stayed at the Royal Heather, the larger of the two last night.

  “I’ll only be a shor
t while,” Moncrief said.

  “All the same, sir, Your Grace, you shouldn’t be traveling without an escort. You’re a duke now.”

  “My father maintained a strict code of ducal behavior all his life, Peter. Are you certain he didn’t hire you to mind my manners?”

  Peter’s cheeks flared with color. “I’m sorry, sir, I was only attempting to be of assistance.”

  Moncrief took pity on the young man, and told him a partial truth. “The journey home has left me with an intense desire for my own company.”

  As they’d crossed the North Atlantic, autumn squalls had made Peter and most of the other passengers ill. Moncrief had been grateful for his hearty constitution, an irony considering that he was on his way home because his brother had died unexpectedly of influenza, and he’d become the twelfth Duke of Lymond.

  His regimental days were over. But before he took up the mantle of responsibility for Balidonough and its people, he planned to remain the colonel of the Lowland Scots Fusiliers for a few more hours.

  Long enough to call upon the Widow Dunnan.

  “If you’re certain, sir. Your Grace.”

  Moncrief smiled. “I’m very certain, Peter. You’ll perform those errands I gave you?”

  The young man nodded.

  In actuality, they were only a few hours away from Moncrief’s home, and they had all the provisions they needed. The horses were newly acquired, and his civilian clothing lay in readiness for him. Peter was finding the inactivity of civilian life disconcerting after three years of regimental restriction. Therefore, Moncrief had given him a series of tasks to perform, such as purchasing a gift for Balidonough’s housekeeper and procuring several nonessential but welcome items like bay-rum scented soap and new cravats.

  A few minutes later, Moncrief left the inn, following the innkeeper’s directions to Colstin Hall.

  Even blindfolded he would have known he was home in Scotland. There was a hint of peat fires in the air, a dampness that was strangely Scottish. A fine mist had fallen earlier and now solidified into fog that clung to the ground.

  Scotland was an old country; here there was history in the trees and rocks and soil. It was this sense of continuity, of age, that he’d missed the last fourteen years.

  His horse, a recently purchased stallion with a penchant for tossing his head to the right, wasn’t even winded before the house was visible. Moncrief halted and dismounted, and wrapped the reins around a rock. He climbed a few boulders until he had an unobstructed view of Colstin Hall, Catherine Dunnan’s home.

  A narrow road framed by tall oaks led to the square three-story red brick structure surrounded by outbuildings and an acreage that looked well maintained as farmland. Fog clung to the trunks of the trees and curled up to the base of the house, making it appear as if it floated, cloudlike, above the ground.

  The impulse that had driven him here was foolish, perhaps, but he hadn’t been able to forget her in all these months.

  He reached inside his tunic and pulled out the letter that was appropriate to this day. The other letters remained in his dispatch case, a place that was safe from prying eyes.

  My dearest,

  I’ve had the front steps rebuilt, and the plastering around the windows restored. Colstin Hall looks a bright and cheerful place, as if waiting for your arrival.

  In spring, the flowers line the lane, bobbing their heads in the breeze. In summer you can hear the buzzing of the bees as they flit back and forth from their hives to the fields. I confess that in winter, the aspect is not so pleasant, unless we have snow and it dusts the bare branches with a mantle of white. But autumn is my favorite time of year.

  Come home in autumn, when the trees are changing color and the leaves fall like a soft rain. There will be a cool breeze and the sky will be a brilliant blue as if to give us a last hint of clement weather. Come home in autumn, my dearest.

  Although the season was right, the sky was pale, not deeply blue. No breeze greeted him, only that eerie fog, as if he trespassed on an otherworldly place.

  He didn’t lie to himself—he wasn’t here because he wanted to give his regards to Harry’s widow. Although he’d expressed his regrets in person to relatives of other fallen comrades, this visit was different. He wanted to meet her, just once, then he could put Catherine Dunnan into a nice little box in his mind and forget her, a feat he’d not been able to accomplish for the past six months.

  Perhaps in person she’d be different. In fact, she could possess little of the character of the woman he’d come to know from her words. She could very well be selfish and bitter and narrow of mind and spirit. She might be cruel to her servants. She could be a spendthrift or a miser, someone utterly forgettable.

  He unfolded the letter and read the last part again.

  I sat beside my bed this evening, my dearest, and said a prayer for you. May the wind blow a warm breeze, may the winter be temperate. May you be sustained with food of a goodly quality and amount. May your health be perfect. But most all, may the travails of war not touch you.

  When I finished, I realized how selfish my prayer sounded, so I expanded it to include all of those in your troop of men. Yet I cannot help but hope, my dearest, that God senses my especial need for you and sends you home with all blessed haste.

  What if she wasn’t forgettable? What if she proved as fascinating in person as she did in her letters? He felt as if he knew her already, knew those traits of personality kept hidden from strangers.

  She was impatient with religion, disliked the posturing of the vicar. Why is it that those who adore God are bothersome about it? Surely God does not insist upon such obnoxious devotion? The vicar had called upon her that day and she’d been annoyed by him.

  She loved the changing sky above Colstin Hall, and thunderstorms. He’d once teased her that a woman who was uneasy in the dark should not be so enamored of storms.

  But they are two different things entirely, she’d answered. A storm is God’s way of showing his presence, while the dark is an absence of light. Does evil not happen more in the darkness than in the midst of a storm?

  As the months passed, Moncrief discovered that the emotions he felt for Catherine Dunnan were not simply those of compassion and pity. He wanted to ease her occasional fears with comforting words, praise her wit, admire her tenacity and sense of purpose, and overall indulge in a type of adultery of the mind.

  He should have measured every sentence, every thought, hiding behind the personality and ultimately, the character of her husband. Instead, Moncrief had begun to reveal more and more about himself, thoughts that he’d never before shared. His duplicity was made easier not only by Harry’s complicit agreement, but also by the fact she’d been married to Dunnan only a month before he was posted to North America.

  “Long enough to realize I’d made a disastrous mistake,” Dunnan said one day. “Never marry an heiress, Colonel. They want avowals of your eternal affection to compensate for the promise of their money.”

  But Moncrief had discovered that Catherine was modest about her status in life, barely mentioning the fortune she’d inherited and speaking more of the man whose death had made her wealthy.

  I miss my father dearly, she’d written once. He made me smile even in his letters, and it seems as if the world is a grayer place after his death. Sometimes, I feel him close to me, and strangely enough, it is when I’m writing you. I glance over my shoulder and think I see him standing there, smiling at me.

  What would her dead father think now?

  Go home, Your Grace. This is not the place for you. This is still a place of mourning, for what might have been, for a future that can never be.

  Something else he and Catherine shared.

  His own dreams could never be realized. Now it was painful to recall his plans for a reunion with his father, his brother. His father would never stand at the great doorway of Balidonough to greet him. Colin would likewise be absent, only his memories, like ghosts, populating the home Moncrief had neve
r thought to inherit.

  He’d never given much thought to his future, being so concerned with simply surviving the present. The past weeks had forced him to think about the woman he’d marry, the children he’d sire, an obligation he owed to Balidonough and the dukedom. Need it be simply another responsibility, however? Merely a duty he performed as diligently as he had all the tasks of the last fourteen years?

  Impatient with reverie and his own hesitation, the Duke of Lymond, clad still in his uniform as a colonel of the Lowland Scots Fusiliers, made his way back to his horse, mounted, and followed the road to Colstin Hall.

  Chapter 2

  “She won’t see you,” the housemaid said, beginning to close the door in his face.

  Moncrief slapped his palm against the wooden panel.

  “I insist,” Moncrief said, irritated with the housemaid’s refusal to at least confer with her mistress.

  “She’s in mourning, sir, and doesn’t see anyone. Except the vicar,” she added as an afterthought.

  “I served with her husband.”

  The maid hesitated. “I’ll tell her, sir. But it’s her decision.” She looked him up and down, a glance not unlike his father’s scornful appraisal when he was a boy. “I wouldn’t hold out any hope. She doesn’t see anyone.”

  She grudgingly showed him to a small parlor facing west. The room was warm despite the fact that no fire had been lit, and the fog still lay thick in the glen. Dust had accumulated on the tables beside the settee and on the mantel, lending an unused, even abandoned, air to the chamber.

  He walked the perimeter of the room, his boots echoing on the planked floor. A sound from overhead made him glance toward the ceiling. Was she coming?

  The gold piping around the stand-up collar chafed at him. No doubt it always had, but he’d just noticed it now because he was on edge. He’d thought about this moment for so long that it was normal for him to be uneasy about it.